Recording and Learning Vocabulary

Some important considerations when recording and learning new vocabulary:

1. Is it useful? Consider field and register - the Academic Word List Highlighter may help you here.

2. What does it mean? A good dictionary will help you. Try Cambridge's free online dictionaries. There's no problem with using translation to understand basic meaning, but you will still need to consider all the other points here.

3. How can you remember it? This article by Scott Thornbury may be useful.

4. What type of word is it? (adjective, verb, noun, adverb - context and a dictionary will help.  If it's a noun, is it countable or uncountable, singular of plural?).

5. How can you use it? Look at the context in which you found it, think about collocation (search The Oxford Collocations Dictionary for help) , and the patterns that it may be used in. Cambridge's free online dictionaries list possible patterns of use under each definition.

6. Does it belong to a FAMILY of words? Finding the word "unilaterally", for example, can open your eyes to "lateral" and "unilateral".

7. Is there anything IRREGULAR about this word / phrase? What do you need to remember about it? Is it a noun with an irregular plural form (e.g. children, people), is it an intransitive verb (if you don't know what "intransitive" mean, check the glossary of the Internet Grammar of English).

8. Can you pronounce it? Again, a good dictionary will give you a phonemic transcription of a word's pronunciation, and online dictionary sites like Cambridge's have sound clips of how to pronounce each word (with British and American variations provided).

Collocations Quiz

If you're still not quite sure what a collocation is, try this very short and sweet quiz on the BBC Learning English website. 

Pattern Grammar

I often find myself using the term PATTERN GRAMMAR when trying to diagnose problems with students' writing, but I wonder if they always understand what I mean by this...I certainly don't think that many other teachers are likely to use the term with them. As far as I can remember, I think that I first heard the term used during a talk by Dave Willis, who wrote a book called Rules, Patters and Words : Grammar and Lexis in English Language Teaching. There's actually a sequence of slides from one of Dave's talks available online here, but I'll try to give my own perspective on things...

My students tend to already know hundreds of patterns without ever having stopped to think about them. When someone learns English, they'll probably realise quite early on that when they use the verb LIKE, they're going to use a noun of some kind straight afterwards (e.g. I like sleeping, I don't like this blog). They'll find the same can apply when they use WOULD LIKE (I'd like a banana sandwich), but when they start talking about plans or aspirations, they need to employ a more complex pattern of words. After all, "I would like a train driver when I'm older" doesn't reflect the ambition "I would like to be a train driver when I'm older". So this is pattern grammar...when you use a particular word, you'll need to know what pattern of prepositions and word forms follows it. The verb GIVE, for instance, can be followed by"me all your money!" and "all your money to me!" but not "for me all your money".

Quite understandably, when a student writes in English, there are going to be some patterns that they need but have not yet learned, and there may be some patterns that they've seen before, but which get forgotten or confused because of the influence of the student's first language. It used to frustrate me that students would produce patterns that they had clearly never seen before in English (and give ME more work to do in correcting their work), but I eventually came to realise that incorrect patterns may be the result of guesswork (perhaps applying a pattern they know for a similar word) or translation. I recently learned, for instance, that in Arabic, the pattern used with CONSIDER is CONSIDER + SOMEONE + AS + SOMETHING, which explains why so many of my Arabic-speaking students insert an unnecessary "as" into expressions with CONSIDER.

So how can we avoid problems with pattern grammar? I would recommend three approaches:

1. Be patient and realistic. Nobody is going to learn the pattern for every English word overnight. Any learner of English will encounter new patterns throughout their life. I know people who are extremely proficient in speaking and writing in English but who still make occasional slips with patterns.

2. Learn patterns when you learn vocabulary items. Any time you learn a new word, check the pattern that follows it. If you write new vocabulary down, write it in the pattern in which you first encountered it. Likewise, if you notice an unfamiliar or surprising pattern while reading, make a note of it and learn it. Do you really know a word until you know how to use it?

3. Use a good dictionary. The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary online is free and with every definition gives examples of the pattern in which a word may be used. When writing an essay, give yourself sufficient time to check patterns that you are unsure of before submitting your work. If feedback from a teacher indicates problems within particular expressions, identify the key word, look it up in a dictionary, and check the patterns which the word may be used within. A student of mine recently produced the expression "they seek for better opportunities". A quick look at the verb SEEK in the dictionary throws up the examples "seeking jobs", "seeking asylum", and "legal advice should be sought". No "for" anywhere...the pattern is simply SEEK + OBJECT. Easy!

Which vs That

OK. What's the difference between WHICH and THAT?...let's take a deep breath and then begin...

Perhaps the first step should be to look at DEFINING RELATIVE CLAUSES. In Cassell's Students' English Grammar, Jake Allsop defines relative clauses as being "like adjectives in that they give information about a noun or a pronoun". However, unlike most adjectives, relative clauses FOLLOW the noun (e.g. the woman that I love, the book that I read).

There are two types of relative clause - DEFINING and NON-DEFINING. Suppose I was to say "I hate the student". Would you know which student I was referring to? I think not, because I have lots of different students. If I DEFINE which student I mean, you will understand more clearly. So, how about "I hate the student WHO ASKS ME QUESTIONS ABOUT GRAMMAR AT THE BEGINNING OF CLASS, BEFORE HE HAS EVEN SAID HELLO TO ME". With this extra information, you can understand that "the student" is Yasir. The clause "WHO ASKS ME QUESTIONS ABOUT GRAMMAR AT THE BEGINNING OF CLASS, BEFORE HE HAS EVEN SAID HELLO TO ME" provides a definition of "the student". OK? Hmm....perhaps I should have chosen a shorter and more simple example. How about "I never eat food". It's not true, is it? So we add "I never eat food WHICH HAS BEEN REHEATED IN A MICROWAVE". The extra information defines the type of food to which I am referring (it's very hard to define defining relative clauses without using defining relative clauses. I love grammar).

The examples I have given so far contain examples of WHO and WHICH, but not THAT. So here's the first key difference between WHICH and THAT:

WHO refers to people (like THE STUDENT WHO ASKS ME GRAMMAR QUESTIONS). WHICH refers to things (like FOOD WHICH HAS BEEN REHEATED IN A MICROWAVE). THAT, however, can refer to both. So we can say THE STUDENT THAT ASKS ME GRAMMAR QUESTIONS and THE FOOD THAT HAS BEEN REHEATED IN A MICROWAVE. Easy. Lovely. Perfect...WHICH = THINGS, while THAT = THINGS or PEOPLE...simple...

If only life were always that simple...actually there are some relative clauses in which it is NOTpossible to use THAT. These are NON-DEFINING RELATIVE CLAUSES, which just give extra information. That last sentence is an example of one, but here are two more:

- I hate Yasir, who comes from Saudi Arabia.

- I read War and Peace, which many people find difficult boring, in less than a week.

In these two sentences, I expect my reader to know who / what I am referring to when I write YASIR or WAR AND PEACE. My reader doesn't need a DEFINITION of these nouns, but I want to provide some extra information, so I provide it through a relative clause. Notice, however, that these relative clauses are surrounded by commas. The comma shows that the clause is separate and, if you like, not ESSENTIAL for understanding my main point. In cases like this, it is NOT POSSIBLE to use THAT. So we can't say "I read War and Peace, that many people find difficult..." or ""I hate Yasir, that comes from...". No no no...

So here is a second key point about WHICH and THAT. Don't use THAT after a comma. This is useful to know, because sometimes WHICH is used to continue a sentence and give extra information about a whole clause or statement. THAT is not used for this person. For example:

- I missed my bus, which is why I was late for class.

- I ate too much cheese last night, which is why I had nightmares.

Remember that THAT does not follow a comma, so if we wanted to use it in these examples, we would have to start a new sentence:

- I missed my bus. That is why I was late for class.

- I ate too much cheese last night. That is why I had nightmares.

Of course, if we are developing an argument in academic writing, we are more likely to use THIS than THAT, because THIS makes the subject seem more immediate and relevant to our reader. This is why (can you see what I'm doing?) you will not find many sentences which begin with THAT in academic writing.

No doubt you are bored of reading this by now, but I should mention two further functions of THAT and WHICH that / which (ha ha) show how different they are.

WHICH is used for questions when, as Jake Allsop states "you wish to identify one or more things or people from a group of things or people". For example:

- Which do you prefer, coke or pepsi?

- Which Spice Girl would you most like to kill...sorry, I mean kiss?

- Which shirt shall I wear tonight?

In such questions, it would be impossible to replace WHICH with THAT. The same is true when we creat a noun phrase with WHICH, such as in the sentence "I can't decide which shirt to wear tonight" or "I don't care which Spice Girl you kill first". Yes, I meant "kill" that time...

Finally, THAT has functions which / that (ha ha again) cannot be performed by WHICH. One is DEMONSTRATIVE, like in the phrase "that time" (two sentences back - remember?), "I want that one!" or even "I don't want to kiss that Spice Girl".

THAT is also a conjuction (e.g."It's so funny that you want to kill the Spice Girls" and "I find it surprising that the Spice Girls are all still alive") and can be used to report speech and ideas - something that university students SHOULD find incredibly useful. Consider expressions like:

- I think that I love you.

- I believe that I love you.

- I know that I love you.

- Don't forget that I love you...

- Have you heard that the Spice Girls have broken up?

...and so on and so on. That's enough love for one evening. Notice, though, how THAT is used to introduce a statement or idea, and it allows us to use one subject and verb after another. I KNOW THAT THIS IS NOT EASY BUT TRY TO REMEMBER THAT I AM DOING THE BEST I CAN...

If you're really clever, you'll ask why I didn't write "the best THAT I can"...but that's a question for another day...

Noun phrases : apposition

Apposition is the use of two noun phrases next to each other, with one none phrase providing a definition of or extra information about the other noun phrase.  This is very common in journalism, and it shouldn't be difficult to find examples like the following in any English-language newspaper:

US President Barack Obama is playing a round of golf on his 51st birthday...

Ghana remains the only Sub Saharan country that Barack Obama, the US president, has visited as part of recognition for its democratic credentials.

Apposition can simplify noun phrase construction.  Rather than writing "the film of Titanic", for example, we can just write "The film Titanic..."

Punctuation

If you are referring to the title of a journal or article, make sure you use the same punctuation that you find in the original text.  For instance, one of my students referred to an article like this:

“disharmony in international accounting standards setting: the Chinese approach to accounting for business combinations”

I'm sure that if we check the original article, there will be more than one capital letter in that title!